


Lost Amongst My Friends

by ryssabeth



Series: Lost and Found [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, M/M, Memory Loss, canon!verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 12:16:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryssabeth/pseuds/ryssabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is not the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost Amongst My Friends

Their reunion is brief, but filled with joy. Everyone embraces, screaming and crying, Gavroche held upon Courfeyrac’s shoulders—and then someone, Feuilly, it sounds like, asks amongst the happiness: “Where is Grantaire?”

The happiness is cut short, abruptly, the echoes of their tears and their laughter bouncing back at them from the surfaces of the buildings.

They look around them and the question is repeated, many times over.

_Where is Grantaire?_

-

They find him in a bar.

Enjolras had expected it—and yet he still feels disappointed, betrayed,  _enraged_. The lot of them can’t sweep in—there is hardly enough space for a collection of schoolboys, Eponine, and Gavroche. And so it’s just Enjolras, breaking up a fight between a  _very_  drunk,  _very_  belligerent Grantaire and another patron.

It is his pleasure to acquiesce when the bartender demands that Grantaire be removed from the premises.

He drags him out by the collar of his shirt, popped up as it often is in the style of those who wish to be left alone or avoided. The others swarm over both of them when he brings Grantaire out, asking and touching and demanding and _yelling_.

He supposes death makes everything just a little more stressful, a little more immediate.

Grantaire, however, swats at them, his face a mix of incredulousness and disappointment. “ _What_  are you people doing? I am  _out_ , thank you. Though I suppose I should count myself lucky that the Lord on high sent one of his emissaries to come fetch me,” his bow is exaggerated, his face a mask of self-depreciation.

“Grantaire, for Christ’s  _sake_ , there was a  _rebellion_ —“ Enjolras says to him, grabbing his forearm with more force than he probably means to, squeezing his arm with more effort than he needs.

And Grantaire shakes his hand off, gazing at his forearm in awe and in confusion. “I’d heard—all the barricades fell, and one with foolhardy schoolboys fell last,” he looks up, his eyes too sharp for how he had been acting inside. “I fail to see how that is  _my_  problem and why  _you_  interrupted a perfectly justifiable conflict with this  _news_.”

“Where  _were_ you?” Jehan comes forward and their friends push closer together, clogging the street with their presence. “That’s what he’s asking—when we woke up, where were  _you?_ ”

The laugh that bursts out of his chest is shocked—and derisive. “How much have  _you_  lot had to drink?” His hands go to his hips, and he looks at all of them in turn, his eyes lingering the longest on Enjolras. “I wouldn’t be caught  _dead_  or _drunk_  at a barricade. Who  _are_  you?”

Enjolras brings a hand to his cheek, the words feeling like a slap to his face. “What?”

“Who.  _Are_. You?” Grantaire enunciates his words slowly, with care, and his inebriation is a little more pronounced when he speaks this way.

“What are you  _talking_  about?” This is Courfeyrac. (They’re having a conflict in a public forum, and now people are starting to stop and stare.) “You’ve been at  _every_  meeting, despite the fact that you think you wouldn’t show up at a barricade. You were  _there_ , you  _fought_  with us, you—“

“Listen,” Grantaire’s eyes blaze under the gas lighting and he takes a step away from all of them. “Listen, I don’t  _know_ any of you. I would  _remember_  you if I had met you,” and his eyes fall upon Enjolras again. “So, if you please, I think you have me confused with someone else and  _I_  will be on my way.”

( _“Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, or of dying.”_ )

They had all been dead.

Corpses in the street.

A gauntlet.

( _“You will see.”_ )

And now, they are alive.

( _“You will see.”_ )

Enjolras stumbles forward, feeling the musket shots taking him off his feet, grabbing for Grantaire’s hand, holding as tightly as he can to his fingers, lest he slip away from him.

“Let go of me,” Grantaire says.

There are tear tracks upon his cheeks.

“No,” Enjolras says simply, and there they stand in the middle of the street, holding hands—but not really. One of them is holding on. The other one is limp—unresponsive. Oblivious. “Why are you crying?”

(His other cheek stings with a slap.)

Grantaire looks at him, defeated and drunk. “I don’t know.”

( _“You will see.”_ )

Enjolras holds tighter.


End file.
